tie a noose around your mind loose enough to breathe
by katanafleet
Summary: Craig stepped back in surprise. The Doctor had a girlfriend. Or a something, since the Doctor hadn't mentioned a significant other. His musing ended when the Doctor thrust his head out of his door. "I was not expecting this!" he yelled in Craig's general direction before slamming the bedroom door shut. Girlfriend. Okay. [first in series]


" _And listen, Mark and I, we had an arrangement. Where if you ever need me out of your hair just give me a shout. Okay?"_

" _Why would I want that?"_

" _Well, in case you want to bring someone 'round, or girlfriend."_

" _Oh, I will. I'll shout if that happens. Yes. Something like, 'I was not expecting this!'"_

Craig Owens heard the doorbell at 3:33 the morning after the weirdest day of his, up until now, normal life.

He reluctantly pulled himself from bed, scrubbed at his eyes until he could see properly, and slowly crept out into the hallway, expecting to see the Doctor with that maniacal grin preparing to explode the door. Because the doorbell was now dinging to the tune of "Jingle Bells" in the middle of summer.

He cautiously opened the door, expecting to see the Doctor with that maniacal grin playing with the doorbell. Instead it was a woman. Suddenly, he couldn't imagine the Doctor with that maniacal grin. Because there was an unknown woman at his flat.

His first impression was _space hair_. Lots of it. Curly and blonde like Sophie's… _Oh, Sophie, pretty Sophie_ … but this woman's hair was of a considerable size. She smiled up at him with what would be a seductive smile to many others, but it somehow wasn't. It was just a smile. A happy, beautiful smile that made Craig want to kiss Sophie. He shook his head to try to knock himself out of it. Then he remembered that he always wanted to kiss Sophie. _Argh._

"Can I help you?" he finally asked.

"Hello, how are you, dear? I believe the Doctor is in this house?" she replied happily, lightly pushing her way past him.

She walked down the hallway in her three-inch heels. She knocked on the Doctor's door. Craig walked after her, expecting to have to try to strong-arm her out of his apartment. The Doctor's door opened slowly and the woman stuck her curly head in.

Craig heard a few unexpected noises: a manly shriek, the crash made when someone falls off a bed backwards into a dresser, and a small bit of incomprehensible yelling. The woman turned back to him, grimaced apologetically, and poked her head back in the room. She whispered something, the Doctor muttered back, and the woman was jerked by the Doctor's unseen hand into the room, her hair bouncing a bit and her hand waving a quick goodbye to Craig.

Craig stepped back in surprise. The Doctor had a girlfriend. Or a something, since the Doctor hadn't mentioned a _significant other_. His musing ended when the Doctor thrust his head out of his door.

"I was not expecting this!" he yelled in Craig's general direction before slamming the bedroom door shut.

Girlfriend. Okay.

He tiptoed to the door, leaned against it, and listened for a moment.

"What are _you_ doing here?" That was the Doctor.

"Just popped in to say hello. What in Rassilon's name are you doing in here, sweetie?" That was the woman. She sounded a little more than flirtatious with the Doctor. Girlfriend. She also had a tone of "sit down and be quiet. I'm in charge." Definitely girlfriend.

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"

"It looks to me like a—" There was the sound of a hand being clapped to a mouth.

" _Shush_! Craig's right outside! Hold on—"

Their voices changed to something like the gibberish he had heard the night before, except now it was both the woman and the Doctor speaking.

The rest of the night or morning, still _early_ and _dark_ and _too early to consider life_ , was random bursts of laughter—he tried not to think about that—and noises that sounded very mechanical— _what were they doing in that room?_ —and quite a bit of yelling—tried not to think about that too—and every word they spoke was absolute gibberish. He didn't know what to think about that.

The woman and the Doctor emerged the next morning, the Doctor scowling and the woman tenser but still smiling. Her hair was fluffier, as if a light electric current had been run through it. She nodded to Craig, opened his cabinets, and poured herself some cereal.

"Aren't you going to introduce us, Doctor?" she asked as she sat at Craig's table.

"Craig—Doctor River Song. River—Craig Owens," he muttered before slouching to the coffee maker. River pulled him back by the back of his tweed and pushed him into a chair.

"Doctor, you are not allowed to play with the coffee maker until we all eat," she snapped at him. He glared back.

"Err, nice to meet you, Doctor Song," Craig said, interrupting their glaring contest. River would have won; the Doctor's was quickly fading to a pout. A very elegant pout with most excellent bottom lip form, but a pout nonetheless. River's glare was probably going to burn a hole through the Doctor's head and through the wall behind him. But it disappeared when she looked at the other man in the room.

"Likewise. And do call me River." She smiled at him again.

"And how do you know the Doctor?"

"A very old friend," she said breezily, pouring milk on her cereal.

"Ha!" the Doctor snapped. "Then who exactly are you, River Song? Tell me _that_."

"What?" Craig asked.

"Nothing," River chirped in his general direction. She was smiling tightly at the Doctor. It looked painful. " _Spoilers_!"

The Doctor growled and paced back and forth in front of the table. "How do you know him but he doesn't know you?" Craig asked River, who was now done with her cereal and washing out her bowl.

"It's very complicated. Calling it a 'complicated' relationship is putting it just a _little_ lightly." The Doctor grimaced at her fond tone and kept pacing. "Forgive him," River murmured in Craig's ear, making him jump. "He's had a rough night."

"Yeah?" was all Craig could say.

"Because this crazy archaeologist who—"

"—stop right there, sweetie, spoilers—"

"—insisted I was doing something wrong when I _wasn't_ —"

"—he would have burned down the flat—"

"—so it might have caused a bit of a flame—"

"—the flat is old and it would have burned down the flat—"

"—it would _not_ have burned down the flat—"

"—that's what you said when you gave Nero that eternal flame—what made you think that was a good idea?"

"Completely different situation, that was—"

"—Rome burned for a reason, you know, and this street would have followed in its elite, glorious, and fiery footsteps—"

"— _Rivah_ …" the Doctor whined.

" _Sweetie_ …" she mimicked.

"Sorry, _what_?" asked Craig.

They turned to him in unison. They smiled a similar smile that seemed to say _silly little humans, love them so._

He blinked at them. They blinked back.

At lunchtime, they all sat on the couch, the Doctor again buried in wires, River poking at the ends and redoing most of what the Doctor twisted together. Eventually, as one might expect from playing with wires attached to the wall, they sparked. Craig jumped and refrained from swearing, but the other two just looked at the wire, the Doctor murmured "that will work, unless you keep messing with my _handiwork_ ," and River smiled apologetically at Craig.

The Doctor looked _just_ slightly jealous at River's direction of her high-voltage smile. Craig grinned. This was going to be good.

Craig kept watching TV and, fine, _fondling_ Sophie's keychain while the two worked. Every now and then one snapped at the other when a wire sparked or smoked, or they just grinned at each other. At one point they started yelling back and forth about sciency things that Craig didn't try to follow. They got over their argument when Craig went to brush his teeth.

River disappeared that night. The Doctor showed her to the door politely, pouting again that she had to go, Craig assumed, although the bowtie-wearing one would never have admitted it. River kissed both Craig and the Doctor on the cheek, turning Craig pink and the Doctor bright red.

After she closed the door behind her and disappeared into the darkness with a flash of light that Craig stared at for a minute, the Doctor stomped back to his room, muttering "blasted _archaeologist_ with her bloody _spoilers_ " and " _shut up_ , Pond."


End file.
